Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) refers to a group of hematopoietic neoplasms involving cells committed to the myeloid lineage. Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is a biologically and clinically distinct variant of AML. In the World Health Organization classification system, APL is classified as acute promyelocytic leukemia with PML-RARA; it was previously classified as AML-M3 in the older French-American-British (FAB) classification system [1,2]. (See "Classification of acute myeloid leukemia".)

Retinoic acid (RA) is a critical ligand in the differentiation of multiple tissues, mediated through binding to a retinoic acid receptor (RAR). RARs belong to the nuclear steroid/thyroid hormone receptor superfamily. Of the three RAR isoforms, RAR alpha is expressed primarily in hematopoietic cells.

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